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BULLETIN NO. 28 APRIL, J9J7 



THE AMERICAN RIGHTS LEAGUE 

For Upholding the Duty of the Republic 
in International Relations 



AMERICANS PART IN THE WORLD-WAR 

BY WILLIAM T: MANNING, D.D., RECTOR OF TRINITY PARISH, N. Y, 

A sermon preached April 22, 1917, in the Church of the Incarnation, 
before the New York Commandery of the Loyal Legion of the United 
States. 

" We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what thou 
hast done in their time of old." — Psalm xliv, i. 



At this grave moment in our nation's history I feel it a special 
privilege to speak to the members of this Society which stands so 
distinctively for the ideal of service to our country and of sacrifice, 
however great, for those principles of right, of liberty, and of justice 
to which the name of America is consecrated. 

These are days to stir the soul of every American. 

Our great country is at war. America has been forced to un- 
sheathe the sword. She is calling now for the service of her sons. 
And she will not make that call in vain. 

There is something immeasurably grand in the sight of a mighty 
nation calling her sons to give themselves, their lives, and all that 
they have, in a high and noble cause. 

And in all history no nation ever gave herself to a higher cause 
than that which we now take up. 



Some of us have felt, and said, that we ought to have taken our 
stand sooner, and I have myself been one of these, but we all feel 
now that> when the call came it could not have been stated more 
adequately, more nobly, more compellingly than in the great mes- 
sage delivered by the President to Congress on the second day of 
April. We are prouder now than ever that we are Americans. 

Old Glory waves to-day with a meaning, and with a message to 
the world, greater and more splendid than ever before. Not for any 
merely sordid or selfish reason, not with desire for territory nor 
for gain of any kind, but for the sake of right and justice, for the 
sake of our own homes, for the sake of our own honor and man- 
hood, we have come forward to share the sacrifices of those who are 
fighting to put down a monstrous evil and to defend the freedom of 
the world. For nearly three years we have watched the foul and in- 
human deeds in Belgium, in Serbia, in Northern France, in Armenia, 
and elsewhere. Day by day our wrath as a people has been rising. 
We have known that we could not continue to sit silent in the face 
of such things. The ruthless invasion of our own liberties, the 
deliberate sinking of our vessels, the murder of our men and women 
and children on the sea, have brought this orgy of crime home to us 
in all its meaning. 

We strike now for the liberties of men everywhere, for the right of 
small nations to exist, for the institutions of democracy and freedom, 
for the right to a decent world to live in, for respect for the laws of 
God and of man. 

Our watchwords in this fight are Belgium, Serbia, and the Lusi- 
tania. They stand for the things that we will no longer tolerate. 

We make our own the words spoken by Mr. Asquith for Great 
Britain : " We shall never sheathe the sword until Belgium recovers 
all, and more than all, that she has sacrificed." 

We have entered deliberately upon this great conflict. What 
then shall be our course now that we are engaged in it? 

There is only one course that is safe, or wise, or worthy of us as a 
nation. We must devote to this struggle the utmost power of our 
resources, our energies, and our manhood. 

We must not presume upon the hope that the struggle may soon 
be over, and that it is now nearing its end. Those best qualified to 
speak tell us that we cannot rely on this, and we have no right to rely 
upon it. How long the war may yet continue, or how great a part 



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we may be required to play in it, nc:ie Cfin say. We must give our 
strength to it as though the issue depended wholly upon ourselves. 

The French and British have been fighting great battles in the 
past weeks, and have made glorious gains. But they are only at 
the beginning of the fearful task of driving the invaders back. 

We hope, and believe, that as a result of the Revolution, Russia 
will be stronger and more determined than ever. But who can say 
at this moment what may happen there? 

We hear of food scarcity, and outbreaks, in Germany, but the 
German people have been trained for generations in obedience to 
autocratic rule, they still have enormous military strength, they are 
still capable of great efforts. We wish they would rise up and 
themselves overthrow those who have led them in this crime against 
the world, but there is no certainty that they will do this soon, or 
ever. The great British Fleet which, in silent, steadfast watch, 
and in valiant fight, has kept guard for the world these three and 
thirty months in the North Sea may continue to do this. We 
believe fully that it will. But in war nothing is certain. No man 
can predict. What if there should be some unlooked-for calamity ; 
some sudden and even partly successful dash in force? Such an 
event might instantly mean emergency for us. 

As Americans, and as true men, we must not rely on a possible 
breakdown of Germany, nor on a possible defense which the arms of 
others may continue to afford us, but on the fullest exercise and use 
of our own power. We owe this to ourselves, and we owe it also 
to our Allies. No other course is safe. No other course is honor- 
able. No other course can even be considered. 

I . We must make ourselves felt immediately in a military sense. 
We must strike at the earliest possible moment, and with all the force 
that we can gather. This is the only effective course, and it is the 
merciful and humane course. War having come, any other course 
is wicked and wanton folly. 

A vigorous and determined prosecution of the war will do more 
than anything else to shorten it, and will save hundreds of thou- 
sands of brave lives. The time has come now for deeds, not words. 
The place for us now is at the front, in the thickest of the fight. 
Thank God, our flag is there already ! Honor to that young Texan 
who carried it on the point of his bayonet up Vimy Ridge ! 

Honor to our brave fellows who are flying the Stars and Stripes 



in the sky, from their aeroplanes above the battle lines! Honor 
to those who have already given their lives in the name of Liberty, 
and for the honor of America, Victor Chapman, Dillwyn Parrish 
Starr, Edmond Genet, Henry Suckley who was remembered in this 
Church this afternoon, and all the others ! 

Honor to the thousands of Americans who are at this moment 
fighting, on the soil of France ' 

And honor to our men here b,t home who are already in the 



ranks, and to those who are enlist 



ng in our Navy, and in our Army, 



in order to be over there at the front, with the others, at the first 
moment possible 1 I wish we might send on ahead a former President 
of the United States, a man whose name and whose spirit are 
known to all the warring nations, with his Division of volunteers, to 
land in France within the next few weeks, as an earnest of the way 
in which we intend to give ourselves to this struggle. 

2. We must all do our part to increase and conserve the ma- 
terial resources of our country, for they may be sorely needed. 

We must do this not unwisely, nor in panic, but with careful and 
well-considered method. 

Certainly we should set ourselves at once to check all waste, and 
to put the ban on extravagance, and luxury, and self-indulgence. I 
believe that we should at once adopt Prohibition for the duration 
of the war. It would be helpful as a measure of food economy, 
and still more as a measure of discipline. 

We are warned that the shortage of food may be a most vital 
factor in the war. The man who in the face of this squanders his 
means, and weakens both his body and his mind, by needless in- 
dulgence in eating, or in drinking, is as much a slacker as the man 
who marries in the hope of thus escaping military service. 

3. We must no longer permit our counsels to be divided, and 
our spirit to be paralyzed, by the influence of the Pacifists. Some 
of these men are sincere and well-meaning, but their teaching is 
unbalanced and unsound, and it has done harm to our country. It 
is not true either to the highest instincts of the human heart, or to 
the principles of the Christian Religion. This teaching has made 
some of our people indifferent to moral issues and neutral between 
good and evil. There is nothing Christian about such an attitude 
as that. The Christian is one who loves righteousness and hates 
iniquity. " O ye that love the Lord, see that ye hate the thing that is 



evil." The Christian Religion does not teach that crime is to have 
its way in this world unchecked and unpunished, nor that physical 
suffering and death are the worst of all evils. Not "peace at any 
price, " but "righteousness at any cost," is the ideal of the Gospel. 
The Nietzsches and Bernhardis scoffed at Pacifism supposing this 
to be Christianity. They are learning the true power of the Chris- 
tian religion in the courage and sacriftce of the soldiers of Great 
Britain and France. War is always a terrible thing, to be avoided, 
prevented, eliminated, just so far as this is possible. But the much- 
quoted saying that " there never was a good war, nor a bad peace," 
is pernicious, sordid, and untrue. There are cases in which peace is 
immeasurably worse than war. There are cases in which war is right 
and peace is wrong and shameful. There is a worship of peace which 
means the surrender of principle and the decay of manhood. 

If England had not entered this war when Belgium was invaded 
she would have been a disgraced and dishonored nation. And if 
America had not now taken her stand for righteousness, as thank 
God she has done! it would have been at the cost of her own soul. 
The Pacifists misled England at the price to her of untold blood and 
treasure, and they have been misleading us as far as they could do 
so. They are still at work, opposing the necessary measures for our 
own defense, and for our effective participation in this struggle for 
righteousness and justice. The President's wise and right demand 
for conscription is now opposed in Congress by the same men who 
did all in their power to keep us from taking our true place and part 
in this war. Pacifism had its full illustration in the utterance of the 
first woman to sit in Congress — ' ' I want to stand by my country, 
but I cannot vote for war." It is time for us to speak out with no 
uncertain voice against such mental and moral confusion, such 
misguided and dangerous sentimentality as this whether it be in 
men or in women, in Congress or out of it. 

4. We must have Universal Military Training and Service, and 
we must have it not merely to meet the present emergency, but as 
the only proper permanent system of National defense. It is the only 
system that is adequate, just, and democratic. It is the only system 
that is effective. It will bring untold benefits, moral as well as 
physical, to the young manhood, and to the whole life of our nation. 
There is nothing for us to fear in the word "conscription." It 
stands for real Americanism. It stands for the fact that the country 



has a right to the service of all her sons, and that she will require 
service of them all alike, without difference or discrimination. The 
adoption of this system will serve as nothing else could to weld 
together the varied elements of our mixed population, and to knit 
us into one great whole of American life and citizenship. 

And on this important occasion, in the presence of those so 
identified with the best interests of our country as are the members 
of this Society, I wish to pay my personal tribute of respect and 
honor to the man who, by his rank, by his abilities as a soldier, by his 
experience, and by his character stands out in the forefront in all our 
minds at this critical time, who has done far more than any other to 
arouse, to warn, and to educate our country on this vital question, 
and who is entitled in the highest degree to our confidence and our 
grateful appreciation — Major-General Leonard Wood. 

Men of the Loyal Legion : — ^These are great days in which we are 
living. They are days which must lift us all, in public or in private 
life, to higher planes both of vision and of action. They are days 
which must make us all wish to be worthy of the great opportunity 
offered to us to serve the world, and of our name as Americans. 

If there is anything in us it must come out now. 

The glorious soldiers of France and Britain, of heroic Belgium, 
and all the others, have heard with unmeasured joy that America, 
the strong young giant of the West, is coming in. They are fighting 
the battle for us now, but we are not going to sit here and let them 
do this. Our message to them is that we are coming, that we will 
soon be there, that we will keep coming in uncounted numbers, and 
that we will never stop until Prussianism is completely overthrown, 
until the infamous wrongs which have been committed are as far as 
possible set right, until law and justice have been reestablished, 
until the world is made "safe for democracy" and the foundations 
are laid deep and firm for world-wide brotherhood and lasting peace. 

Note : Copies of this and of the other Bulletins of the League can 
he secured at the office of the League, 2 West 43th St., New York. 



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